(POST)COLONIAL AFRICA by Katherine Lynn Coverdale the F
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ABSTRACT AN EXPLORATION OF IDENTITY IN CLAIRE DENIS’ AND MATI DIOP’S (POST)COLONIAL AFRICA by Katherine Lynn Coverdale The focus of this thesis is aimed at two female French directors: Claire Denis and Mati Diop. Both auteurs utilize framing to create and subsequently break down ideological boundaries of class and race. Denis’ films Chocolat and White Material show the impossibility of a distinct identity in a racialized post-colonial society for someone who is Other. With the help of Laura Mulvey and Richard Dyer, the first chapter of this work on Claire Denis offers a case study of the relationship between the camera and race seen through a deep analysis of several sequences of those two films. Both films provide an opportunity to analyze how the protagonists’ bodies are perceived on screen as a representation of a racial bias held in reality, as seen in the juxtaposition of light and dark skin tones. The second chapter analyzes themes of migration and the symbolism of the ocean in Diop’s film Atlantique. I argue that these motifs serve to demonstrate how to break out of the identity assigned by society in this more modern post-colonial temporality. All three films are an example of the lasting violence due to colonization and its seemingly inescapable ramifications, specifically as associated with identity. AN EXPLORATION OF IDENTITY IN CLAIRE DENIS’ AND MATI DIOP’S (POST)COLONIAL AFRICA A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts by Katherine Lynn Coverdale Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2020 Advisor: Dr. Elisabeth Hodges Reader: Dr. Katie Johnson Reader: Dr. Jonathan Strauss ©2020 Katherine Lynn Coverdale This Thesis titled AN EXPLORATION OF IDENTITY IN CLAIRE DENIS’ AND MATI DIOP’S (POST)COLONIAL AFRICA by Katherine Lynn Coverdale has been approved for publication by The College of Arts and Sciences and Department of French and Italian ____________________________________________________ Dr. Elisabeth Hodges ______________________________________________________ Dr. Katie Johnson _______________________________________________________ Dr. Jonathan Strauss Table of Contents 1: Claire Denis and Mati Diop: French-African Film in Conversation 1 2: The White Other: Analyzing Race in Claire Denis’ White Material and Chocolat 5 The Other Counterpoint 8 Ambiguity and Difference 17 Race and Gender 23 3: The Search for Identity: Migration in Mati Diop’s Atlantique 31 Decentering the Human 34 Those Left Behind 40 Diop’s Ghost World 44 4: Colonial ConseQuences 49 iii Dedication For Mom and Dad, thank you. iv Acknowledgements There are many people to whom I am grateful for helping me through this process and working on this project. First, to every educator, coach, and mentor that has influenced me in my life and in my academics. Every educator has impacted me in some way, but I am particularly grateful to Kevin Hinkle, Katy Nagaj, and Heather Baugher and my incredibly brilliant thesis committee Dr. Katie Johnson and Dr. Jonathan Strauss. No thank you is big enough for my advisor Dr. Elisabeth Hodges. Her guidance, patience, and work ethic are both inspiring and indispensable to me throughout not only this project, but my other academic endeavors as well. Love and thanks to my friends and family who have encouraged me the past 18 years of my academic life. Special thanks to Mady Neal and Callie Miller for being my sounding board, a source of encouragement and inspiration, and for always offering to edit my work. Thank you to my rock, Precious Ayah, for talking through my ideas with me, calming me down when I was stressed, and telling me to come back inside from the pool and type. Finally, thank you to my amazing parents. Your love and support cannot be overstated. v 1: CLAIRE DENIS AND MATI DIOP: FRENCH-AFRICAN FILM IN CONVERSATION If there’s specific resistance to women making movies, I just choose to ignore that as an obstacle for two reasons: I can’t change my gender, and I refuse to stop making movies. Kathryn Bigelow1 Last year I had the pleasure of meeting and speaking with French-Senegalese filmmaker Alain Gomis. During a screening of his film Aujourd’hui (2012), I was struck by the lighting of a particular sequence. When asked about how he chose to light it in such a manner he replied with something along the lines of intuition: he “just knew it had to be done that way”. While that answer might not be helpful for an aspiring director, his response gave me some insight into the intuitive sense of some directors. French director Claire Denis had a similar reaction when asked about her changes in point of view during her films, attributing her admired expertise to a feeling.2 Denis studied at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques (now the École nationale supérieure des métiers de l’image et du son), and graduated in 1971 at age 23. Following her graduation, she worked as an assistant director to Costa Gavras, Jacques Rivette, and Wim Wenders to name only a few.3 Denis’ filmography spans genres, from fiction to documentaries, shorts, video-art films, and even to television series. Her first feature film, Chocolat, debuted in 1988 and was selected to be among the films at the Cannes Film Festival. Years later in 2001, Denis’ film Trouble Every Day was booed off the screen by the same critics at Cannes. This film is cited as the closest to a horror film Denis has ever made with its plot following erotic vampires in Paris. Her films are largely known to be intertextual and based on literature.4 In 2009, Denis directed the film 35 rhums, a film that takes place in the Parisian suburbs and centers around ambiguous and complex familial relationships. The main character of that film is played by Mati Diop, future director of Atlantique (2019). At the time, Diop was a student at Le Fresnoy, studying to become a filmmaker, and emphasized the high regard she already held for Denis. 1 Perry, Michelle P. “Kathryn Bigelow Discusses Role of ‘Seductive Violence’ in Her Films - The Tech.” The Tech - Online Edition, 16 Mar. 1990. 2 “Dialogues & Film Retrospectives: Claire Denis.” Walker Art Center. 3 “Claire Denis.” The European Graduate School, 27 Aug. 2019. 4 Williams, James S. Space and being in contemporary French cinema. Manchester University Press. 2015. p. 233-284. 1 Mati Diop comes from an artistically polyvalent family: her uncle is a celebrated filmmaker from Senegal (Djibril Diop Mambéty), her father a musician, and her mother partook in several artistic endeavors including photography, directing commercials and now buys art. Despite her predisposition for a career in the arts, Diop came into her cinematic career without much influence from her family, except perhaps her own innate talent. Some of her most notable films in her newfound directing career are shorts Atlantiques (2009) and Mille Soleils/A Thousand Suns (2013) and award-winning full-length feature Atlantique (2019).5 Diop credits Denis with the direction and force her career has taken. She says, “The more I advance in my own path the more I realize how the experience with her [Claire Denis] was very foundational.”6 Diop even credits working on 35 rhums with Claire Denis as an experience that inspired her to return to her African roots, since playing the daughter of a black man reminded her that she herself was not only white, but also black. In the film her character is biracial with a French- African father and a white mother from Germany. This resonates with Diop’s ethnicity and identity as a biracial woman of French-Senegalese descent, her father from Senegal and her mother a white, French woman. Thus, portraying this role in 35 rhums became a moment where she also rediscovered and took back her own identity. These two auteurs intersect not only in real life and their experiences together as directors, but also in the subject material and visual style of their films. Specifically, Denis’ White Material and Diop’s Atlantique pair well together in an exploration of female identity in Africa. More specifically, the directors interrogate their protagonists’ identities in the midst of post coloniality by simultaneously acknowledging colonialism’s influence and attempting to break from its constraints. The countries where colonialism took place – unnamed African country in White Material, and Senegal in Atlantique - fell into a state of organized chaos following the political end of colonialism. There was no longer colonized and colonizer, but a spectrum of identities that took into account a person’s religion, gender, sexuality, and race. These factors create the ambiguous identities of the protagonists in both films. White Material and Atlantique also revolve around the liminal. For Denis, it is a liminal temporality, the time in between colonization and post-colonialism, whereas Diop focuses on liminal space, namely the 5 Atlantique was the winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes film festival. 2019. 6 Lim, Dennis, host. “Mati Diop on Atlantics.” Film at Lincoln Center Podcast. Episode 268. SoundCloud. 2019. 2 ocean. Furthermore, their cinematographic methods are similar in their framing techniques, lack of dialogue, and also their use of shaky handheld cameras. The African setting of both films plays an important role in these women’s lives as well since they both have strong ties to the African land. Claire Denis grew up in Africa and Mati Diop is of French-Senegalese heritage, as previously mentioned. Their connection to the land is reflected in their films, often shown with big sweeping landscapes in a long shot, demonstrating the grandeur and power of these places. Denis’ first film, Chocolat, also presents these images and will be included in my argument in the first chapter on Claire Denis.